Tribute to Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti: A great public health physician

Abstract

Nearly a century after his birth and 20 years after his passing, we look back in awe at the attributes and contributions of the great public health pioneer Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a giant of Africa whose reach spanned the globe. I was among a generation of students fortunate to be trained under his tutelage. While a medical student specializing in paediatrics at Columbia University in New York, I was accepted to be his student fellow in 1979-80. Soon thereafter, I arrived in Nigeria and began work in Paediatrics Ward D at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. In contrast to the paediatric hospital in New York, our upstairs children’s unit was modest. Yet, I quickly saw that the process and outcomes were often superior to the ‘modern’ methodology to which I had been accustomed. Professor Ransome-Kuti emphasized the primacy of the physical exam. One of his favorite questions: What do you observe? He understood that you can only interpret a lab result together with what the patient in front of you is presenting. Prof was fabled for his bedside manner. He would speak with the mother and then, regardless of the age of the baby, would engage directly with the patient. The eye contact with the child soothed both the little patient and the parent.